Another term for Recep Erdogan in Turkey. Is it good news or bad news for Syria?

To my reckoning, Erdogan is a war-criminal who has brought misery and death to countless Syrian people over the last twelve years. He worked alongside the Obama administration to orchestrate regime change in Damascus. He allowed weapons to flow into Syria from Libya through Idlib (which is still enemy-occupied territory in Syria) and he backed Muslim Brotherhood militants on the front line of the Syrian insurrection. Even so, his election in 2023 may be good news for Syria!

As astounding as it may seem, Erdogan seems to have changed tack on Syria. Along with Syria’s other great nemesis, Saudi Arabia, the Turkish president seems to have lost interest in the US agenda for Syria and is strengthening Turkey’s ties with Russia and Iran! It was Erdogan’s opposition that was pledging to uphold the US agenda! Strange times indeed!

Dave

More wisdom from Steven Sahiounie:

The secret of Erdogan’s success in the 2023 election

Erdogan decided to focus on an underrepresented group. Turkey is a large country, and has several sizeable and important big cities; places as Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir. However, the country has thousands of small villages, and the villagers are generally under-educated, Islamic fundamentalists, holding conservative values, and have felt their voices were unheard in Ankara.

Erdogan had been religious as a young man, and it was easy for him to identify with the religious people living in rural areas. People felt marginalized because their wives and daughters wore a headscarf, and this had been banned in government institutions.

A similar tactic was employed successfully by Donald Trump in 2016. He focused on supporters in rural areas, under-educated and with fundamentalist Christian values. 

Mustafa Kemal, Ataturk, is considered to be the father of modern Turkey. After the 400-year reign of the Ottoman Empire in Turkey fell at the end of WW1, Ataturk came into leadership and had a new vision for the collapsed country. He banned the headscarf and banned using the Arabic alphabet in writing, instead writing in the English alphabet and from left to right, like in Europe.  Ataturk wanted Turkey to look west, follow Europe, and turn its back on the old ways of Asia and the Middle East. He was a visionary and transformed Turkey into a secular, modern, and Western-looking nation.

However, the Turkish villagers didn’t fully embrace the secular vision Turkey came to represent; a 99% Islamic country, but organized as a secular democracy.  The villagers, the backbone of Erdogan’s support, were happy for modern improvements, but they clung to their fundamentalist religious beliefs as a badge of honor. Erdogan knew how to harvest their votes, and they kept him in power for two decades, and they got him re-elected on May 28, 2023.

read the complete article here.